Against denial. Against fascism. Against climate nonsense, racism, misogyny, religious bigotry, and anti-intellectualism.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Idiot of the week: Bob Carter, data pervert

Story here. It's amazing. Carter got caught switching from one source of temperature data to another when the first showed too much warming -- this caused an abrupt drop in temperatures which was concealed in the graph by placing it at the point the two-page spread jumped from one page to another.

This manipulation was not in service of Mann's hockey stick (still holding up nicely after multiple reviews, thank you very much) nor was it discovered by purloining hacked e-mails. Instead, it was crafted to further the lie that “We have shown that internal global climate-system variability accounts for at least 80% of the observed global climate variation over the past half-century.”

This is clear-cut scientific malfeasance in service of a political agenda -- namely, as Carter puts it that since, “The close relationship between ENSO and global temperature, as described in the paper, leaves little room for any warming driven by human carbon dioxide emissions,” curbing such admissions should be off the table.

Has this liar been the beneficiary of Mr. Watt's denial boosterism? You know he has! In fact, Watt's reposted a Carter screed called -- I'm not kidding -- "The Science of Deceit." I guess we should see that title as less tsk-tsk and more how-to. A sample from the man who just got caught red-handed manipulating data to hid warming:

"A well-accepted aphorism about science, in the context of difference of opinion between two points of view, is 'Madam, you are entitled to your own interpretation, but not to your own facts'."

"In the face of such attitudes, which treat the established mores of scientific trust and method with contempt, . . ."

"So much for data perversions."

So much for data perversions, indeed. You want fries with that projection?

EDIT: This may not be the first time Bob Carter has fudged his data . . . or even the first time he's been caught at it. Consider this interesting email, found at Skeptical Science:

When I emailed Bob Carter querying about his data in the article above, this was his reply (28 Jun 2007):

"By mistake the graph that was reproduced in the Telegraph article was for the middle troposphere. Though it does not materially affect the argument or conclusions, I am embarrassed by it because it can be made to look as if I was pulling a swiftie - which I wasn't (intending to)."

I'll take Carter at his word that it was an honest mistake, although I've noticed he continues to state satellites show little to no tropospheric warming.

In 2007, Carter swaps a graph from the middle troposphere into an article about the lower troposphere, hiding the warming trend in the latter. Maybe he's not dishonest, just terminally sloppy, but don't these graphical "mistakes" -- which always seem to conceal warming -- seem a little similar for comfort?